Week 2 of the NFL season is in the books and there were a lot of good football games to be watched. However, a theme seemed to develop over the day and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I’d been disturbed by this trend throughout the pre-season and last year as well.
Of course I’m talking about the disturbing trend of fat defensive linemen jumping, prancing, pirouetting and otherwise frolicking after sacking the opposing team’s quarterback. In the Bears game alone this past week, I had to endure the sight of wide-load Defensive Tackle Anthony Adams perform awkward ballet moves at least 3 times—and he didn’t even have any sacks!
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that these guys start doing some kind of premeditated dance after making a good play. There is nothing more pretentious and phony than a previously thought-out celebration dance and it’s bad sportsmanship besides. And I’m all for expressing the exuberating feeling of accomplishment at making a good play. It is a game after all! But someone needs to tell the fat guys that there are just some things fat guys should never, ever do.
Chief among these things are skipping, performing spinning turns and doing that ballet move where you take a running leap, bringing one knee up and letting the opposite leg kick out in back of you completely straight—while placing one arm in front and the other in back. Actually, let’s just leave it at the fact that fat guys should not, under any circumstances, perform any maneuver that even closely resembles ballet.
I just don’t think the proper way to celebrate athletic accomplishment for a 350lb man should ever involve doing anything that some women do while wearing tutus. Call me old-fashioned, but I think a fist pump or a Hulk Hogan muscle pose works just fine with the added benefit of not appearing effeminate to the meathead opponents across the field who want to rip your head off.
Fat guys dancing in the NFL have simply gotten out of control. Retired NFL fat guy Warren Sapp goes on the Dancing with the Stars and all of the sudden each and every one of these Beluga’s is channeling his inner Baryshnikov! It’s got to stop! It’s just not fair to those of us watching to be subjected to this! Aside from Rerun on What’s Happening, America does not want or need to see fat men dance. It’s not pretty. If I want to watch that kind of undulating jiggle, I’ll make Jell-o!
It simply has to stop. It has to stop now. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell needs to step in and make a rule change. Fifteen-yard penalties should be assessed for Unnecessary use of Blubber. The NFL in recent seasons has gone out of it’s way to protect the health and long-term wellbeing of its players, but how about a little love for the fans now? My eyes will never be the same again! The image of that fat man flying through the air like Tinkerbelle her own damn self will haunt me at least the rest of this week and potentially the rest of this season.
Enough is enough. We all have our limitations in life. It’s nice that those fat guys can stand up and be role models for the rest of us who are chubularly challenged and show us that even fat guys can be athletes. They give us hope. But we’ll never be Olympic divers, we’ll never sit in coach, we’re not meant to try bungee jumping and under no circumstances, should we ever prance like ballerinas—especially not after grabbing another sweaty man forcefully, hugging him and jumping on top of him (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
Showing posts with label Chicago Bears. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chicago Bears. Show all posts
Monday, September 21, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
34
What do you do when the right thing to do, conflicts with…the right thing to do? This is the dilemma now faced by the Chicago Park District, the Chicago Bears and family of former Bears great Walter Payton. At first, when you hear the idea, it seems like a no-brainer. The Payton Family wishes to have a statue which is currently being sculpted, just outside of historic Soldier Field where Walter Payton spoiled and delighted Bears fans for years.
However, the Park District, which owns Soldier Field, has rebuffed the Payton’s and their supporters. They have done so respectfully, and regretfully—offering to place the statue in any other CPD park, but not at Soldier Field. The problem is that Soldier Field and the park-owned property around it, were dedicated to the memory of our nation’s soldiers. Bears legends like Dick Butkus, Mike Ditka, Gayle Sayers and George Halas do not have statues outside of Soldier Field for this very reason. There are places commemorating their achievements in the various concourses inside the stadium, but the field, and the park area around the stadium are expressly meant to be a memorial to veterans.
It’s easy to see each side of this issue. That Payton deserves a statue is beyond argument. He does. That it should be at Soldier Field seems to be the fitting location for such a monument. However, if that statue became the focal point for visitors to the stadium, which it surely would, then wouldn’t that be a bit of an insult to the Soldiers, Marines, Airmen, Seamen and Guardsmen to whom this stadium has been dedicated? Is it right to honor one at the risk of diminishing the honor of many others?
It would be sad to see the statue of Payton go up anywhere else. It would be sad to diminish, in any way, the sacrifices made by those who have honorably served our country. Payton is not a veteran. If he was, perhaps this would be a bit easier. Still, to see his statue at another park, or any other place in Chicago just wouldn’t seem right. Like Michael Jordan’s statue at the United Center, Payton’s statue belongs at the place the Bears call their home. It’s the fitting place.
And so the only solution that seems obvious is this: The Field Museum of Natural History is the neighbor of Soldier Field. Why not place the statue at the outermost limits of the Field Museum property, where fans trekking to Soldier Field will still be able to stop and admire the statue, while the ground that is sacred in it’s dedication to our veteran’s goes untouched? Certainly, Walter Payton is an important piece of Chicago history and in the history of our beloved Bears. He deserves to be placed near the place where he embodied the hard-working, never-quitting attitude of our blue collar city.
Payton’s statue deserves to overlook the place of his triumphs and conquests. Those to whom the stadium was dedicated deserve their respect and admiration. Compromise is the solution. The answer is simple. Time to step up and do the right thing—for both parties, who each, in their own way, are right and just and deserving.
However, the Park District, which owns Soldier Field, has rebuffed the Payton’s and their supporters. They have done so respectfully, and regretfully—offering to place the statue in any other CPD park, but not at Soldier Field. The problem is that Soldier Field and the park-owned property around it, were dedicated to the memory of our nation’s soldiers. Bears legends like Dick Butkus, Mike Ditka, Gayle Sayers and George Halas do not have statues outside of Soldier Field for this very reason. There are places commemorating their achievements in the various concourses inside the stadium, but the field, and the park area around the stadium are expressly meant to be a memorial to veterans.
It’s easy to see each side of this issue. That Payton deserves a statue is beyond argument. He does. That it should be at Soldier Field seems to be the fitting location for such a monument. However, if that statue became the focal point for visitors to the stadium, which it surely would, then wouldn’t that be a bit of an insult to the Soldiers, Marines, Airmen, Seamen and Guardsmen to whom this stadium has been dedicated? Is it right to honor one at the risk of diminishing the honor of many others?
It would be sad to see the statue of Payton go up anywhere else. It would be sad to diminish, in any way, the sacrifices made by those who have honorably served our country. Payton is not a veteran. If he was, perhaps this would be a bit easier. Still, to see his statue at another park, or any other place in Chicago just wouldn’t seem right. Like Michael Jordan’s statue at the United Center, Payton’s statue belongs at the place the Bears call their home. It’s the fitting place.
And so the only solution that seems obvious is this: The Field Museum of Natural History is the neighbor of Soldier Field. Why not place the statue at the outermost limits of the Field Museum property, where fans trekking to Soldier Field will still be able to stop and admire the statue, while the ground that is sacred in it’s dedication to our veteran’s goes untouched? Certainly, Walter Payton is an important piece of Chicago history and in the history of our beloved Bears. He deserves to be placed near the place where he embodied the hard-working, never-quitting attitude of our blue collar city.
Payton’s statue deserves to overlook the place of his triumphs and conquests. Those to whom the stadium was dedicated deserve their respect and admiration. Compromise is the solution. The answer is simple. Time to step up and do the right thing—for both parties, who each, in their own way, are right and just and deserving.
Monday, December 29, 2008
No More Love for Lovie
I’m not an extremist when it comes to firing coaches. It seems that the standard in sports today though, in the era of ESPN and non-stop talk radio and yes, message boards and blogs where every knuckle-dragging Neanderthal can spout off on any topic, that as soon as any team loses the talk begins about the removal of the coach. In most cases, it’s a foolish over-reaction by people who have no idea what they are talking about.
As someone who spent thirteen years as a coach, albeit on the very most amateur level, I know what a difficult and thankless job it can be. I’ve attended seminars given by some of the most respected coaching minds in sports today. I’ve put in the hours in the trenches as they may say, so when I speak out against a coach, it’s only after giving it a lot of thought and I assure you, it’s not an alarmist reaction.
That said, I think I may actually be in the minority in my opinion, which is this: The Chicago Bears need to fire head coach Lovie Smith post haste.
The reason is two-fold, one having to do with the fact that after having watched him for a few years now, I have come to the conclusion that he isn’t the right coach for this team. The second is because of the limited availability of a guy who would be. The second reason would be irrelevant without the first, of course, but because I believe it to be so, it’s something that comes into play.
Let’s start with why Lovie Smith isn’t the right guy for the job. And the answer is a simple one. There are two kinds of coaches in this world, real coaches and talent managers. I think that Lovie Smith is a fine talent manager, which means that when he has a team that is more talented than yours, he manages them in a way that keeps them from losing. He is player-friendly to the last, he never calls a specific player out in public, he never ruffles feathers, he is calm, collected, pensive and obtuse.
If the Bears did choose to fire him, which they most certainly will not, there wouldn’t be a single player who spoke a bad word about him. There would be outrage because just a couple years ago, he guided the Bears to an appearance in the Super Bowl, but I believe that to be a fallacy now. He didn’t guide them anywhere. He rode them to that Super Bowl. Simply put, his team was talented, so he was considered a good coach; it wasn’t a case where they were a good team because he was a good coach.
The sign of a good coach, a real coach, a coach worth keeping and paying is how his teams play and compete when they aren’t the most talented team. As the saying goes, he can take his’n and beat yours’n, and then take yours’n and beat his’n. A good coach’s team can overcome adversity, like injury to key players because he’s coached the backups to be ready to step in and fill the void. A good coach gets the most out his players. A well coached team will get better, not worse, as a year goes on. A good coach is all things—father, mother, brother, sister, friend, enemy, boss, peer, comrade, antagonist, psychologist and bus driver. A good coach is never universally liked, but is universally respected. A good coach is emotional, but never a slave to his emotions. I’m sorry, but I just don’t see it in Lovie. In him, I see a guy who is excellent with the wind at his back, and useless when walking into the wind.
The Bears players do not ever improve. They are good or bad. They are as is merchandise. If you draft, trade or sign a player, what you see is what you get. There is no growth curve. I cannot name a single player who has been a shining example of being coached up during the Lovie Smith era—a player who has made vast improvements. They are either good or bad when they get here. There is never any growth. That is the indictment. That is the proof in the pudding. That is the basis for labeling Lovie Smith a talent manager instead of a real coach. Sadly, the Chicago Bears will rarely be the team that pays for the most talent, so is a talent manager really the best choice for our coach?
The most common opinion now is that Lovie deserves one more year, that the Super Bowl appearance in 2006 earns him one more chance and therein lies the biggest problem. Coaches are going to start getting the axe left and right today, with the regular season over and done. Every one of those teams is going to being pursuing the best man for the job out there, a real coach who has always gotten the most from his teams, Bill Cowher.
IF, the Bears let Smith go, they would immediately become the most attractive option for a coach like Cowher, who would relish the chance to coach one of the original franchises, steeped in history and tradition and to be part of that tradition. If the money was right, there wouldn’t be a more attractive destination out there for him. The fact of the matter is that while the cupboard isn’t full of talent, it’s far from devoid of it. Chicago is a great sports town with a great fan base. Simply put, it’s one of the best places to coach in all of football, if not professional sports as a whole. If the money was right, Cowher could be the next coach of the Bears. But he won’t be.
Lovie Smith was given a contract extension based on the Super Bowl run. The Misers of the Midway won’t dump him until the stench of the corpse rot is definitive. They won’t take the chance that he may yet be a good coach. They won’t take the chance that they were wrong to have given him more money. Muster up your best West Texas drawl and say it with me: Lovie Smith is our football coach.
It’s a shame, because Cowher and Chicago would have been an amazing fit. But it’s a pipe dream, it’s as likely as the country banding together to ask Obama to step aside and have George Bush run things for four more years.
So, are the Bears doomed to mediocrity or worse until Lovie finally does get fired? No. The dynamic that football has that offers hope is the amount of responsibility that the coordinators have in the running of the team. A team manager like Lovie Smith can be successful if his Offensive and Defensive Coordinators are real coaches—and good ones. As the staff stands now, that’s not the case. If Lovie must stay, then Turner and Babich must go. It’s time to get some new blood in those jobs. A D-Coordinator with some fire is a must. The team obviously responds to that, as they did for Ron Rivera when he held the job. And both on offense and defense, our coordinators should be innovators. They should be ahead of the curve, not always trying to catch up to it. The era of the Cover-2 is over, it must evolve or die. And Ron Turner has had the same playbook since Jim Miller was our quarterback. He’s more predictable than the winter snow in Chicago. His biggest innovation of the year was being the last coordinator in the league to try the new-fangled “wildcat” formation. Gee. How exciting.
It’s been a long time since the Bears have had a real coach. They seem to be enamored with this prototype, poker-faced, ultra-calm, unflappable kind of coach. When it was time for Dick Jauron to go, they hired Dick Jauron with a tan. Meanwhile, when you say the words coach and Bears together in the same sentence, every and any football fan out there immediately thinks back to Mike Ditka. Great coaches become legends in this town. We haven’t had a legend in a long time. Cowher could have been a legend. Twenty years from now, I could have enjoyed a steak at his steakhouse downtown, but I won’t. I’ll still be going to Ditka’s and re-living ’85. Sad, isn’t it?
As someone who spent thirteen years as a coach, albeit on the very most amateur level, I know what a difficult and thankless job it can be. I’ve attended seminars given by some of the most respected coaching minds in sports today. I’ve put in the hours in the trenches as they may say, so when I speak out against a coach, it’s only after giving it a lot of thought and I assure you, it’s not an alarmist reaction.
That said, I think I may actually be in the minority in my opinion, which is this: The Chicago Bears need to fire head coach Lovie Smith post haste.
The reason is two-fold, one having to do with the fact that after having watched him for a few years now, I have come to the conclusion that he isn’t the right coach for this team. The second is because of the limited availability of a guy who would be. The second reason would be irrelevant without the first, of course, but because I believe it to be so, it’s something that comes into play.
Let’s start with why Lovie Smith isn’t the right guy for the job. And the answer is a simple one. There are two kinds of coaches in this world, real coaches and talent managers. I think that Lovie Smith is a fine talent manager, which means that when he has a team that is more talented than yours, he manages them in a way that keeps them from losing. He is player-friendly to the last, he never calls a specific player out in public, he never ruffles feathers, he is calm, collected, pensive and obtuse.
If the Bears did choose to fire him, which they most certainly will not, there wouldn’t be a single player who spoke a bad word about him. There would be outrage because just a couple years ago, he guided the Bears to an appearance in the Super Bowl, but I believe that to be a fallacy now. He didn’t guide them anywhere. He rode them to that Super Bowl. Simply put, his team was talented, so he was considered a good coach; it wasn’t a case where they were a good team because he was a good coach.
The sign of a good coach, a real coach, a coach worth keeping and paying is how his teams play and compete when they aren’t the most talented team. As the saying goes, he can take his’n and beat yours’n, and then take yours’n and beat his’n. A good coach’s team can overcome adversity, like injury to key players because he’s coached the backups to be ready to step in and fill the void. A good coach gets the most out his players. A well coached team will get better, not worse, as a year goes on. A good coach is all things—father, mother, brother, sister, friend, enemy, boss, peer, comrade, antagonist, psychologist and bus driver. A good coach is never universally liked, but is universally respected. A good coach is emotional, but never a slave to his emotions. I’m sorry, but I just don’t see it in Lovie. In him, I see a guy who is excellent with the wind at his back, and useless when walking into the wind.
The Bears players do not ever improve. They are good or bad. They are as is merchandise. If you draft, trade or sign a player, what you see is what you get. There is no growth curve. I cannot name a single player who has been a shining example of being coached up during the Lovie Smith era—a player who has made vast improvements. They are either good or bad when they get here. There is never any growth. That is the indictment. That is the proof in the pudding. That is the basis for labeling Lovie Smith a talent manager instead of a real coach. Sadly, the Chicago Bears will rarely be the team that pays for the most talent, so is a talent manager really the best choice for our coach?
The most common opinion now is that Lovie deserves one more year, that the Super Bowl appearance in 2006 earns him one more chance and therein lies the biggest problem. Coaches are going to start getting the axe left and right today, with the regular season over and done. Every one of those teams is going to being pursuing the best man for the job out there, a real coach who has always gotten the most from his teams, Bill Cowher.
IF, the Bears let Smith go, they would immediately become the most attractive option for a coach like Cowher, who would relish the chance to coach one of the original franchises, steeped in history and tradition and to be part of that tradition. If the money was right, there wouldn’t be a more attractive destination out there for him. The fact of the matter is that while the cupboard isn’t full of talent, it’s far from devoid of it. Chicago is a great sports town with a great fan base. Simply put, it’s one of the best places to coach in all of football, if not professional sports as a whole. If the money was right, Cowher could be the next coach of the Bears. But he won’t be.
Lovie Smith was given a contract extension based on the Super Bowl run. The Misers of the Midway won’t dump him until the stench of the corpse rot is definitive. They won’t take the chance that he may yet be a good coach. They won’t take the chance that they were wrong to have given him more money. Muster up your best West Texas drawl and say it with me: Lovie Smith is our football coach.
It’s a shame, because Cowher and Chicago would have been an amazing fit. But it’s a pipe dream, it’s as likely as the country banding together to ask Obama to step aside and have George Bush run things for four more years.
So, are the Bears doomed to mediocrity or worse until Lovie finally does get fired? No. The dynamic that football has that offers hope is the amount of responsibility that the coordinators have in the running of the team. A team manager like Lovie Smith can be successful if his Offensive and Defensive Coordinators are real coaches—and good ones. As the staff stands now, that’s not the case. If Lovie must stay, then Turner and Babich must go. It’s time to get some new blood in those jobs. A D-Coordinator with some fire is a must. The team obviously responds to that, as they did for Ron Rivera when he held the job. And both on offense and defense, our coordinators should be innovators. They should be ahead of the curve, not always trying to catch up to it. The era of the Cover-2 is over, it must evolve or die. And Ron Turner has had the same playbook since Jim Miller was our quarterback. He’s more predictable than the winter snow in Chicago. His biggest innovation of the year was being the last coordinator in the league to try the new-fangled “wildcat” formation. Gee. How exciting.
It’s been a long time since the Bears have had a real coach. They seem to be enamored with this prototype, poker-faced, ultra-calm, unflappable kind of coach. When it was time for Dick Jauron to go, they hired Dick Jauron with a tan. Meanwhile, when you say the words coach and Bears together in the same sentence, every and any football fan out there immediately thinks back to Mike Ditka. Great coaches become legends in this town. We haven’t had a legend in a long time. Cowher could have been a legend. Twenty years from now, I could have enjoyed a steak at his steakhouse downtown, but I won’t. I’ll still be going to Ditka’s and re-living ’85. Sad, isn’t it?
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